


The Knight Before Christmas

by stuckoncloud9



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Batman: The Animated Series
Genre: Christmas, Developing Relationship, F/F, Girls Being Girls, Mind Control, Mind Manipulation, doing crimes, nothing out of the usual for ivy though
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-22
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:20:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27143743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stuckoncloud9/pseuds/stuckoncloud9
Summary: Hoping to raise the spirits of her partner in crime, Poison Ivy treats Harley Quinn to an early Christmas gift.(Based on the episode "Holiday Knights" from the New Batman Adventures, but Ivy's pheromone mind control is a lot more effective and the girls have a MUCH more successful crime spree).
Relationships: Pamela Isley/Harleen Quinzel
Comments: 3
Kudos: 26





	1. Room Service

“Red...”

Ivy carefully let a single drop of the concentrated spore extract fall from her pipet into the vial sitting on her makeshift lab table. Her newest formula shivered and hissed at the addition — a promising bet for the compound’s effectiveness, though not necessarily its stability.

“ _Red_...”

She picked up the test tube, quickly pouring it into the flask already set up above the bunsen burner. Ivy watched studiously as the liquid began to bubble and thicken.

“Red!”

Ivy blinked as the sounds coming from behind her finally bypassed her concentration. Setting down her equipment, she wheeled her chair around to face her partner in crime. “Did you say something?”

Harley rolled her eyes, crossing her arms over her oversized _Women Want Me, Fish Fear Me_ t-shirt. “Just your name, about fifty times,” she said. “Sheesh. You chemists and your chemicals. Mad scientist, much?”

“What can I say?” Ivy said, pulling off the rubber gloves she always wore for lab work. She might have been immune to all her own toxins and pheromones (and had inoculated Harley against... well, _most_ of them), but that didn’t mean she needed to track them all over the hotel room. “I love what I do.”

“And I’m very happy for you,” Harley said, leaning against the wall. “Really. I know seasonal depression is something you usually struggle with. But it is getting _really_ gloomy in here!”

“How so?” Ivy asked, standing up from her chair to walk over and open the window. She wrinkled her nose at the emanating cold of the exposed elements, but left the pane open just a crack. With what she was cooking on the desk, it would be necessary to get some fresh air circulating. 

Harley sighed dramatically, keeling over to flop onto the bed. Her latest Hyena, Bruce, padded over from its resting spot on the pillows to lick her nose sympathetically.

“Here it is, holiday time, and we’re hanging out in this dingy rat trap!” she said, kicking up at the ceiling in emphasis. “No presents, no fun, no nothing!”

“No fun?” Ivy protested. “We watched _Little Shop of Horrors_ on pay-per-view last night. What do you call that?”

“ _You_ call that fun,” Harley said. “ _I_ call that an hour and forty two minutes of you talking over the TV, and then spending another two hours complaining about the test audience reshoot ending where the man-eating plant dies. You know what would be fun for _me_?”

“Watching cuts of the original ending on Youtube?” Ivy asked hopefully.

Harley rolled over until she was right side up and staring in Ivy’s direction. “Getting a Christmas tree.”

“ _What_?” Ivy shouted, stalking over to the bed. “And support the mad campaign of botanical genocide that grips this country every December?”

“A fake tree!” Harley said quickly, backing up until she hit the headboard. 

“Still,” Ivy said, turning away. “It’s about the principle of the thing. Why do _you_ want a Christmas tree, anyway? I thought you were Jewish.”

“I’m Christmas on my father’s side, and Hanukkah ended an entire _week_ ago,” Harley said. She pulled the comforter off the sheets and wrapped it around her as the winter chill started to fill the room. “Besides, Christmas trees are so bright and fun and pretty! And their blatant consumerism means you can make them all goofy without feeling guilty about demeaning a centuries-old religion.” 

“One could argue that the blatant consumerism demeans the centuries-old religion all on its own,” Ivy said. 

“Or you could _not_ do that, and have fun!” Harley said, crawling over to where Ivy stood at the end of the bed. “Please? Please, please, please...”

Ivy pulled the comforter over Harley’s head, muffling her repeated pleas. “Ugh,” she said, walking back over to her makeshift lab. “Calm down, Harls. Once I’m done with my new formula, I promise we can take it for a test run that will make this the happiest holiday you’ve ever had.”

“Really?” Harley asked, poking her head out from under the plaid fabric. A few seconds later, a hyena head joined her, sniffling curiously at the comforter. “What’s it do?”

“Technically speaking... the exact same thing my pheromones always do,” Ivy admitted.

“Oh,” Harley said, sounding disappointed. “I was kind of hoping that it would turn people into pine trees, or something.”

“Turn into—” Ivy paused, her eyes glazing over with mental calculations, until finally she shook her head. “Hmm. Not enough time to develop that before Christmas, but remind me you said that next November.” 

“I’ll put a pin in it,” Harley promised, miming skewering something mid-air. “So what’s different about this formula, if it does the same lovey-dovey deal as all your other ones?”

“Well, you know how last year I pheromoned Superman?” Ivy said, taking the vial of heated, thickened liquid off the bunsen burner. “And Batman was able to defeat him in about twenty minutes despite the fact that Superman is god-adjacent, because he was so drugged up on plant spores that he wasn’t thinking correctly?”

“Oh, Selina told me _all_ about that,” Harley said with a snort. Bruce the hyena cackled along with her, but stopped instinctively at Ivy’s glare.

“And then I told her it wasn’t funny and she should be ashamed of herself,” Harley added quickly. “Siding with Batman against you. Bad kitty.”

“Uh- _huh_ ,” Ivy said skeptically. She turned away from Harley to pour the liquid into the tubular compartments of a rubber mold. “Well, I’m tired of pheremoning accomplished and powerful heroes, only to have them become complete pushovers once they’re in my thrall. It’s fine when I’m brainwashing security guards, or forcing Eddie to give me his hideouts, but on _Superman_? I’d like to actually get my money’s worth.”

“Not that you actually _spend_ money on any of your supplies,” Harley said, getting up to peer over Ivy’s shoulder. “So now when you whammy people, being under the influence won’t make them so... under the influence?”

“That’s the idea,” Ivy said, picking up the tray and setting on the windowsill to cool. “More or less, anyway. I’ve been testing this formula on the hotel staff all month, and this version _should_ be perfect.”

“What, really?” Harley asked, surprised. “Huh. I guess that’s why no one ever objected to Brucie being here.”

“It’s also why the cleaning staff keeps trailing seeds everywhere,” Ivy said. “Some of the earlier prototypes had unexpected side effects.”

“Oh, I thought that was you,” Harley said. “In that case, I should probably apologize for putting that rat in your underwear drawer in revenge.”

Ivy made a dismissive gesture. “No worries,” she said, “I relocated it.”

Harley’s eyes widened as she glanced around the room.

“Anyway,” Ivy said, tapping a finger against the waxy, solidified material in the mold. “To celebrate my decisive scientific victory... and this meaningless, tree-destroying holiday.. I was thinking we could turn my final trial run into something of a caper.”

“Ugh, Metropolis at Christmastime?” Harley said, stopping her frantic assessment of her surroundings to stick out her tongue in disgust. “That place is _already_ unbearable the other eleven months of the year. I bet the villains there don’t even _do_ crime for the holidays.”

“Not Metropolis,” Ivy promised, carefully extracting one of her toxic creations from its plastic shell with a pair of tweezers. “Not unless you wanted to, anyway.”

Reaching into one of the desk drawers, she pulled out a silver metal tube and placed the waxy green material inside. She pushed Harley down into her chair with a hand to her shoulder, then twisted the thin container until her creation was just the right length above the rim.

“Since you want to have some holiday fun, I thought maybe _you_ could choose my test subject,” Ivy said. She leaned over to apply the formula to Harley’s lips; the blonde’s breath hitched as Ivy pulled up her chin, carefully coloring over Harley’s cherry chapstick. “Anyone you want. My treat.”

“Anyone?” Harley asked, once Ivy had pulled back. The green wasn’t her usual color, but Ivy thought it looked good on the woman regardless.

“Anyone,” Ivy echoed, grabbing a cap from the drawer and sealing her exciting new lipstick. “Within reason, anyway. They have to be within driving distance, I’m not about to try catching a flight this close to Christmas.”

“Hmm,” Harley pondered. As she sat, her hyena jumped off the bed to trot over and lay its head in her lap, peering up at her with bulging black eyes. 

She grinned, glancing back up at Ivy. “Oh, I think I have an idea.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Technically speaking, Harley's hyenas in the animated series are Bud and Lou. But if you've seen the episode this fic is based on, then you can probably guess why I thought the Birds of Prey reference would be more entertaining.


	2. Going Green

“Did you hear that he adopted _another_ child?”

“I did,” said a dark-haired socialite. Then she frowned. “Wait, I _think_ I did. We might be thinking of different children. Was yours a girl or a boy?”

“They’re all boys,” said a woman draped in furs that looked almost as fake as they did expensive. “And they all look exactly like him. I think he has a complex.”

“No, the last one was a girl!” the original speaker, a petite pink-garbed woman, insisted. 

“Whatever,” said the faux fur fanatic. “There’s too many of them, anyway. I can’t even imagine how many different ways _that_ will is going to be split. Whatever happened to leaving everything to your wife?”

“He doesn’t have a wife,” her dark-haired friend protested.

“Yet!” the smaller woman said, optimistically. 

Ivy restrained herself from sighing, already bored despite only walking up to the group of women a moment ago. “Wow girls, look!” she said, pointing towards one of the ceiling beams. “He’s standing under the mistletoe!”

The three women followed her finger, glancing over to where Bruce Wayne was chatting with his friend Veronica Vreeland. Hopefully, Harley’s rich person disguise would prevent the red-headed socialite from recognizing the woman who had kidnapped her for a full 24 hours last year. 

“Oh my god, he is,” the ballerina squealed excitedly. “Brucie!”

Harley gave Ivy a wink from the other side of the room. As the three women stalked over to Bruce’s location, he backed away, smiling apologetically. Before he could get too far away, however, Harley caught him from behind; as he turned to address her, she leaned in for a kiss. 

Ivy smirked as Bruce staggered backwards. The playboy looked confused for a moment, before his features melted back into his previous smile and he turned back to the other women. Ivy couldn’t hear what he said to them at this distance, but she could guess by the way their faces fell and Veronica’s lit up with amusement.

Vreeland raised her glass in a joking toast as Bruce offered his arm to Harley, who accepted happily. Ivy slipped away into the crowd as Harley skipped towards the exit with Bruce in tow.

Ivy made it outside first, undelayed by the many gracious goodbyes Harley’s new playboy had to give his social circle in order to escape the party early. She glanced around at the sea of cars waiting patiently to chauffeur their rich owners away, her eyes eventually settling on a green convertible with very comfortable-looking leather seats.

She walked up to the car, tapping on the window. The driver lowered it, peering up at her with annoyance. “Yes, ma’am?” he asked. “Can I help you?”

“Not really,” she said, then leaned forward to kiss the man on the lips. He sputtered in shock, a noise that quickly turned to gagging, then choking. She caught his head by his thinning hair before his face could fall onto the car horn, then pushed him to the side as she reached further in to open the door. Once it was unlocked, she dragged the man out the car, letting him drop onto the road as she took his place in the driver’s seat.

She gave Harley a short wave as her fellow criminal finally exited the mansion, Wayne’s arm still wrapped around hers. Harley waved wildly back, almost whacking her new friend in the head. Bruce narrowly avoided her arm with a quick duck to the left, though his expression didn’t change from pleased amusement. Ivy took it as a positive sign that his cognitive functions hadn’t been too negatively impacted by the pheromones.

Not that Bruce Wayne had much in the way of cognitive functions to begin with. Ivy couldn’t help but wish Harley had chosen someone a little more intelligent for her field-test-slash-Christmas-present, but Ivy supposed nothing was stopping her from trying again with someone who had slightly more brains than beauty once all this holiday nonsense was over. 

In the meantime, Ivy was planning on taking full advantage of having unlimited access to Gotham’s most eligible walking wallet. 

“Care for a ride, Mr. Wayne?” Ivy asked, leaning out the car window to peer up at him and his criminal companion. 

Bruce glanced over at Harley, who nodded enthusiastically. “It would be my pleasure,” he said, turning back to Ivy.

“Excellent,” Ivy said, sitting up to crawl into the backseat. “You’re driving.”

“Oh, oh!” Harley said, jumping up and down. “Give me a sec you guys, I have to grab Bruce from the car we came in.”

She started to walk away, then paused. “Um, Bruce the hyena, not Bruce the... you,” she clarified to Wayne. She bit her lip and looked over at Ivy. “Oh, wow. Do you think that's going to be confusing?”

“Absolutely,” Ivy said as she laid down across the leather interior. 

Harley frowned, then shrugged dismissively. “I’ll just call you Bruce Two,” she told the man beside her. “You’re going to _love_ Bruce One. That sweet baby is a total riot.”

“If you love him, then I’m sure I will too,” Bruce said, leaning down to kiss her hand. Harley giggled, shooting Ivy a look that screamed _Can you BELIEVE_ _this guy?_

Ivy watched with amusement as Harley patted Bruce on the cheek, then turned around to dash towards the car they’d stolen on the way there. She glanced up at Bruce pointedly once the two of them were alone.

“Well?” she said, gesturing meaningfully towards the driver’s seat. 

He glanced down at the twitching chauffeur lying facedown on the street. “Is he dying?”

Ivy raised an eyebrow. “Does it matter?”

Bruce stared down at the man, wordlessly answering her question. Ivy sighed, letting her head thud against the car door. Obviously her new formula was allowing for _too_ much cognitive function. Apparently this wouldn’t be her final trial after all. 

“He’ll be fine,” Ivy said, frustrated. “In fifteen minutes, he’ll just look like he got drunk on the job. No fuss, no muss, no tracing him back to us.”

Bruce didn’t react to her statement, but bent over to pull the man off the concrete street, leaning him against the sidewalk curb and out of the way of incoming cars. When he was done, he took his spot in the driver’s seat and began carefully examining the dashboard, adjusting the mirrors and turning the key in the ignition. 

“Back!” Harley announced as she jumped into the passenger’s side. Barely a second later, a streak of brown fur leapt up into the car and onto her lap. If Wayne was bothered by the sudden presence of a large hyena in his personal space, he didn’t show it. 

“Where to?” he asked, glancing over his shoulder as he began pulling the car out of its spot in the line of parallel parking. 

“Hmm,” Harley said, peeking out over at the car’s other inhabitants through the massive wall of fur on her lap. “Gee, Red, I don’t know. I didn’t really get this far planning it out.”

“Color me surprised,” Ivy said, sitting up to lean against the back of Bruce’s seat. “Brucie dear, your two favorite party girls are out for some Christmas fun. You’re the casanova, why don’t _you_ decide how to make the season bright?”

Bruce tilted his head, considering, as he drove out of the massive circular driveway that occupied the front of his friend’s mansion. “I could take you out for a holiday shopping spree?” he offered. “Usually women enjoy me the most when I’m buying them things.”

“Psychologically speaking, that's incredibly depressing,” Harley said, stroking her pet’s spotted fur. “But for a night out, it sounds _super_ fun! What do you think, Red? I know normally you just wear leaves, but the trees are pretty sparse in December. Maybe we could pick you out something a little less organic to wear?”

“Bergduff's _does_ have a darling floral collection right now,” Ivy mused.

“Then it’s settled!” Harley declared. “Bruce Two, take us to the shopping district!” 

Bruce One leaned over to lick the face of its namesake. Despite his obvious discomfort with the fallen driver, Wayne didn’t flinch at all at the proximity of slavering jaws so close to his face.

“The classy one with the department stores,” Harley added. “Not the one with pawn shops and the subpar porn.”

“I assumed,” Bruce said. “Would you ladies mind if I make a call? I wouldn’t want anyone waiting for me at home to get the impression I was waylaid by something untoward.”

“Ooh!” Harley said, turning to peer back at Ivy through the bars of her headrest. “That’s a good sign for your formula, right? If he’s smart enough to avoid suspicion, then he’d probably be smart enough to melt Batman’s head off with heat vision!”

“I feel like I should clarify that I don’t have heat vision.”

“Hush, you,” Ivy said, flicking the back of his head. “I don’t know, Harls. He’s been acting all... independently sentient. I don’t like it. If we let him make a phone call, he might use it as an opportunity to tip off the police to what we’re doing.”

Bruce shot her a hurt look through the rearview mirror. “I would _never_ do anything to undermine or endanger Dr. Quinzel.”

“Aw, he called me doctor!” Harley said, patting Bruce’s hair in much the same manner as she’d just been petting her hyena. “That’s so cute. Besides, Red, isn’t independent sentience the whole point? It’s better if he’s thinking with his head.” She giggled. “The higher up one, I mean. Normally your lipstick has guys thinking with their—”

“I get the picture,” Ivy said. “Fine. Make your call, Brucie boy.”

“I appreciate it,” he said, reaching up to his ear. Ivy couldn’t even see what he was adjusting, but a moment later he was clearly talking to another person entirely.

“Hey, Alfred,” Bruce said, flipping on the car’s blinkers as they came to a turn in the road. “Could you tell Tim I won’t be available to meet him on Fifteenth tonight? Yeah, I’m with some friends of Ronnie’s and it looks like it might be a longer night than I was originally expecting. No that is not a euphemism, please keep your wry British aphorisms to yourself.”

Harley giggled, then covered her mouth with a hand. She quickly did the same to her hyena, before it could join in on the cackling.

“Thank you, I appreciate it,” Bruce said. “No, I’m not comfortable with Tim going to Fifteenth without me. But there’s a show on Douglas that I think he’d be interested in, and I’m fine with him _watching_ by himself. He can tell me how it went later.”

He frowned. “Yes, I am wearing my seatbelt, which I can only _assume_ is what you mean by protec— Alfred, you are worse than the paparazzi. I’ll see you tomorrow. No, you may _not_ read into that.”

He put a hand up to his ear again, presumably turning off whatever communicator he’d been speaking into. “Butlers,” he said, by way of apology.

“Who’s Tim?” Harley asked, propping up her chin on the panting hyena head. 

“One of the kids,” Bruce explained. “He’s quite the detective, so if I ditched him without an explanation I’m sure he would have found me in no time.”

“Aww,” Harley said. “So cute. What a good dad. Isn’t that _so_ cute, Ivy?”

“Adorable,” Ivy said, though her tone of extreme disinterest made the word more of an insult than a term of endearment.

“‘Good’ is a strong word,” Bruce said. “So is ‘dad,’ actually.” 

“Oh, sure,” Harley said, nodding. “Whatever you kids are calling it these days. I just think it’s nice that you go out of your way to hang out with him. My dad never spent quality time with me, and look how I turned out!” 

“As absolute perfection?” he guessed. 

“Actually, that was a rhetorical question, but I will _absolutely_ take that answer!” Harley said with a grin. “Hey Red, you think this new shade of lipstick would work on Mr. J?”

“ _No_!” Ivy snapped immediately. Both Bruce and Harley turned to look at her.

“His... his chemical makeup is too unstable,” Ivy said, clearing her throat. “Combined with the aftereffects of his dive at Ace, the formula probably wouldn’t work at all. Or have unexpected side effects.”

Bruce’s reflection in the rear view mirror raised a single manicured eyebrow. 

“Aw, damn,” Harley pouted for a moment, then brightened again. “Well, that’s okay. I wouldn’t want that fake shit from him anyway! No offense, Bruce Two.”

“None taken,” Bruce said generously. 

“Oh, oh, _oh_!” Harley squealed, rolling down the window and pointing outside. “There it is, there it is! I can see it on the horizon”

“Pretty sure that’s just an office building,” Ivy said, settling back down into a lounging position on the leather seats. 

“I’m _so_ excited,” Harley continued as if she hadn’t heard Ivy speak. “Normally they don’t even let me _in_ these fancy places unless I have a gun!”

“You do have a gun,” Ivy pointed out. “You have several guns.”

“Yeah, but I’m not going to have to point it at anyone or _anything_!” Harley said, then sighed blissfully. “Oh, Red. This is going to be the best December 22 _ever_!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is set in the animated series where Ivy is trying to get Harley to break up with Joker (repeatedly and often unsuccessfully). I decided not to tag Jarley because Harlivy IS the endgame here, and if Joker does end up appearing at all, it'll probably only be for one or two scenes.


End file.
